A. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a medical facility building structure that allows a patient to easily navigate his or her way through the facility.
B. Description of the Related Art
When a person goes to a medical facility, they typically have a difficult time finding the various rooms that they have to go to. For example, a person may be told to go to a waiting room, or to a doctor's room. The person may be told to go to a lab for blood samples. That person may then have to go to an office, in order to fill out papers, and after tests go to a check-out room, etc.
Needless to say, many persons get frustrated trying to get to the correct room in a medical facility. When a person checks in, the person is typically told to wait in a waiting room. After a period of time, that person is then checked by a doctor or by a nurse in a doctor's room. From there, the person may be sent to different rooms in order to have different tests performed. However, the person usually is given poor instructions as to where to go, and that person sometimes gets lost within the medical facility as a result.
Within the medical facility, a person may be given a variety of directions and instructions from different people along the route on how to get where the person has to go to. For example, the person may be told to “Follow signs for the cafeteria, and then turn left into a corridor, where you will find the X-ray room.” Such cryptic directions are difficult to follow, needless to say.
Providing directions is a big problem, mainly because communicating with people is not always simple. Instructions and directions are given differently by different persons, and understanding them is another problem onto itself. In a large complex facility such as a medical facility, this problem is exacerbated. One may get directions from several different people on their way to a desired location within the facility, whereby those instructions may conflict with each other.